Unexpected
by KEB94
Summary: Daniel Charles had no idea who the kid was. Now, however, he knew there was going to be a huge change around here. How this would turn out, only time would tell. The only two people who could help this kid were the two who actively went out of their way to avoid one another. Life in the ED was about to get very interesting...
1. Chapter 1

**One**

_**A/N:** Okay, so - full disclosure, I've had this concept floating around in my half-written pile for about 18 months now. It would never happen on the show - even TV writers have their limits, after all - but that is what fanficiton is for! Fair warning here - I'm re-writing Rheese's history in a really big way here. It'll make sense in context._

_Speaking of context - they're both still at Med. I haven't quite decided exactly where it would sit in the timeline. (Which is to say, I may break canon slightly ... this was written a looong time ago now). Bear with me._

* * *

A young girl, clearly not even yet a teenager, stood outside the glass sliding doors to the emergency department of Gaffney Chicago Medical Centre. Her long, dark curls were thrown up into a haphazardly secured ponytail, and contrasted brilliantly with her alabaster skin and clear blue eyes. She stood there, silently, for a solid half an hour just staring at the doors.

At a first glance, she fit right into the crowd moving in and around the hospital that morning. Upon further inspection, however, there was something just a little different about her. Her jeans were ill-fitting, just a little too big. Her shirt was clearly a hand-me-down, one that had well and truly served its time, just like her beat-up old sneakers. Her jacket was far too thin for the Chicago winter - she had no hat, no scarf.

She was in two minds as to whether or not she would actually go inside. On the one hand, stepping through those doors could change her life. On the other hand, it could be the world's biggest, most colossal mistake.

There was a kind looking older man inside the department who kept looking out through the waiting room, as though he were observing her. He was an old man, in comparison to herself. He had big glasses, a stethoscope around his neck, and a light grey lab coat. The way he stopped to speak to patients and the other people around him, it gave her the impression that he was a nice man. Someone to confide in. Someone who could be trusted.

An hour later, she was still in her same spot, though she was sitting down now, leaning up against the short concrete wall of the flower bed behind her. That man from inside was still watching her, almost as though he was checking on her every now and then. When the snow eventually started to fall at around lunchtime, he slowly made his way out of the emergency department with a to-go cup in his hands. He approached her slowly, almost as though he was being careful not to scare her off.

"Hello," he said kindly, sitting down beside her on the edge of the concrete flower bed. "I'm Dr Charles. I noticed you've been out here for a while. It's kind of cold. Thought I'd bring you a hot chocolate."

She was cautious, but she still gave him a small smile and accepted the warm drink gratefully. He couldn't quite place it, but something about this girl looked all too familiar to him. It was something about her eyes, and that smile. It niggled at him, but he had come up with nothing.

"You've been sitting out here for a few hours now. You must be cold."

She shrugged. "It's no worse than anywhere else I could go," she said quietly.

"Is there a reason you've come to see us today?"

He'd intentionally left the question open-ended. As you would expect, it was highly unusual for someone to sit for hours outside in the cold - particularly the cold of a Chicago winter - and not come inside. Especially since Gaffney Chicago Medical Centre is a hospital.

She thought long and hard about what to say or whether she would even respond. Up close, she had a solid gut feeling about this doctor. He was a good guy. He was definitely someone she could trust.

"I'm deciding," she said simply.

If he was confused, he didn't show it. But she had definitely piqued his interest. "Deciding?"

Her eyes briefly looked up to him, then she was staring into the emergency department again. "There's someone in there that I think I want to meet. But I don't know for sure. So I'm deciding."

"Well," he said, "how about you and I go into that waiting room where it's warm. Maybe we can talk about it together?"

Her smile was back again. "I might still be a kid, but I've seen enough shrinks in my time to know when I'm being shrunk."

He really didn't know what to do with that comment. It was a very interesting turn of phrase, one he'd never really heard before in this sort of a situation. It sounded so odd, but she'd said it with a straight face.

"I'm sorry?" he asked her, actually giving away his confusion this time.

"I'm a foster kid, Dr Charles," she explained. "The system really sucks. So do their shrinks. But if you think you can help me decide, then sure. Let's go inside and talk."

He lead her through the first set of sliding glass doors, watching her watch the world around her very intently. Something she'd seen through the doors to the emergency department itself had jarred her, but she'd tried to brush it off by turning away from it.

"Why don't we go through here," Dr Charles suggested, gesturing to those very doors. "We can find a quiet place to sit down together and help you make your decision."

"No, thank you," the young girl replied very quickly. "I'm not a patient. The second you make me a patient, you have to call social services. And I'm not going back to that quote-unquote 'home' they put me in."

It was just as he had suspected. There was definitely more to this girl than met the eye. She was calm, quiet, polite and certainly the most erudite person of her age group he'd met in a very long time, but she was also trying to cover for the fact that there was something more going on.

"You are correct," he agreed with her calmly. "If you are a patient, we are required to get social services involved. But - see that room there?"

He pointed across the football toward the doctor's lounge, which was currently very empty. She'd followed his gesture and nodded.

"That's a nice quiet room, definitely not used for patients. Usually just for doctors, but I think we can make a special exemption. And it has a never ending supply of hot chocolate."

She thought about it momentarily, then finally nodded. "Okay," she said.

She knew, of course, that he would eventually be forced to call in social services. But at least right now, he was willing to listen. To work inside her parameters. To help.

Once they had arrived in the doctor's lounge, she immediately gravitated toward the small table and chairs where someone had left a blank notepad and a Gaffney branded pen. She immediately picked both of them up, and began idly doodling as she waited for Dr Charles to begin speaking. When he didn't, she stopped and looked up.

"You're creating a vacuum," she observed. "By not saying anything, your intention is to sit back and wait for me to talk."

This was definitely one smart kid.

"Well, you're the one with the decision to make. Why don't you tell me about it?"

She smiled. "It's quite complicated."

"Then I'll do my best to keep up."

She surveyed him again for a long moment, then resumed her doodling as she told him the story. "I've been in the foster system my whole life," she said. "My biological mother was a teenager when she had me. She never signed over her parental rights, so I couldn't be adopted."

"And I gather you've never met her?"

"Nope," she said, shaking her head.

"So why are you here?" he asked her kindly. "This is a hospital."

"And hospitals treat patients. Sick people."

He watched her, waiting for her to continue speaking.

"I have stage four chronic kidney disease," she told him finally. "I'm heading into full renal failure, fast. Much faster than the sub-par doctors in the public health system ever anticipated."

"I'm very sorry to hear that," Dr Charles said kindly. "I take it you've been undergoing treatment."

She shrugged. "They worked their way down the list. But the dialysis isn't really working all that well anymore. I need a transplant."

That was when it clicked. "And you need to find your biological mother. You think she might be a match."

"Apparently there's something weird about my blood. They can't find a HLA match on the registers." She looked back at him and said, "I need a biological relative."

He listened, taking it all in. This girl was quite literally on her last legs. It explained a lot about her - she was very small, almost at the point of looking under-nourished. Finding her birth mother was literally her last chance at living.

"So why come to Med?"

She reached into the ratty old backpack she was carrying and pulled out a very thick folder.

"My social worker, he's useless. He's also very clueless." She pushed the folder toward him across the table. "He didn't even notice when I took my file right off his desk."

"And he has apparently failed to notice that you've left New York City," Dr Charles observed, looking only at the insignia on the front of the folder.

"It wasn't like it was hard," she shrugged. "I bought a bus ticket. No questions asked."

"Why Chicago?"

There was that familiar smile again. He couldn't quite place it and it was really starting to irritate him somewhere in the back of his mind. The answer seemed so obvious, like it was right in front of him.

"Her name," the girl said. "It's listed on my birth certificate. It's on the back of the pile on the left-hand page."

Dr Charles didn't open the file until she gestured for him to do so. The moment he lay eyes on the document, he knew exactly why she was here. His sudden sharp intake of breath told her she was definitely in the right place.

"I Googled her. Found out she works here."

He looked from the file to her and back several times before he spoke again. "So you decided the best thing to do was to come here?"

Again, she shrugged. "What else am I supposed to do? It's not like I can just pick up the phone and call her."

Now it made sense. He couldn't place most of her features, though they seemed vaguely familiar too. But all of a sudden, he could place her smile. He saw that smile every day. And the woman who wore it was walking straight for the doctor's lounge. She was about to open the glass door when he suddenly rose to his feet.

"Hey, Dr Charles, there you are."

Too late. She'd walked right into the room. And his young friend had noticed.

"Uh, Dr Reese," he said awkwardly. "Can you please give us just one moment? I need to finish my conversation with my young friend here."

The girl on the other side of her table was on her feet in seconds.

"You're Sarah Reese?" she asked interestedly, observing the newly board-certified psychiatrist standing in the doorway with interest.

"Yes?" Sarah answered, clearly confused. "I'm sorry - have we met?"

There was nothing Dr Charles could do. This situation was going to play out one way or another, and he suspected it wasn't going to go the way the young girl wanted it to.

"In a manner of speaking."

"Sorry?"

The young girl took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and looked directly into Sarah Reese's eyes.

"My name is Joelle," she said defiantly, watching the look on Sarah's face move from confusion, to fear, and then straight out shock.

"Joelle?" Sarah breathed, reaching out to hold onto the doorframe to keep her balance. All of a sudden her head was spinning, and her knees felt weak.

"I know you didn't want me," Joelle said slowly, "but I need your help. As my mother."


	2. Chapter 2

**Two**

_**A/N:** And we're back! I've got to be honest - I really wasn't sure about this one. Wasn't convinced it was a viable concept ... but a few lovely reviewers showed me it just might be. Here it is - chapter two!_

* * *

Sarah Reese stood stock-still in the doorway of the doctor's lounge, her mouth agape. For more than a full minute now, she had been entirely frozen in place. It was as though her mind couldn't comprehend what she was hearing - and seeing. The girl had her nose and, as she would be told repeatedly later on, her exact same smile. For Sarah, however, it was the curls that cinched the deal: There was no denying where those curls had come from.

"You're - but - but -"

She couldn't seem to do anything more than stammer. Unfortunately for her, there was no denying what this meant for Joelle. She was one smart kid, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to pick up on the cues.

The little girl was suddenly on her feet and stuffing the notepad into her backpack. "This was a mistake," she said. "I shouldn't have come."

Dr Charles found himself stepping in then. "Joelle, please -"

"- NO!"

It would occur to Dr Charles later that she had looked exactly like her mother in that moment. But for now, her yell seemed to shock Sarah back into focus.

"Wait."

The girl stopped then, dead still. The woman in the doorway certainly wasn't a parent by any means, but there was undeniable authority in that single word.

Sarah was clearly about to say something, but she was interrupted. Joelle suddenly went pale and grabbed her stomach. Before either doctor could react, the young girl was doubled over in pain. She hadn't made a noise, but she was clearly clutching at her side.

"Hey, hey," Sarah said, running forward and beginning to examine her. "Talk to me. What's going on?"

The girl looked up. When their eyes locked, there was no denying the fear she'd been trying to hide. And then - she threw up all over Sarah's shoes.

"Okay," Sarah said, far more calmly than she felt. "We're gonna get you looked at, okay? Come with me."

She gently led the girl out of the doctor's lounge and into the madness of the ED, where people were running left and right.

"Maggie," Dr Charles called from behind them. "Our young friend here needs to be seen. Can we take treatment two?"

* * *

Apparently that was okay, because that's where Joelle found herself half an hour later. She was dressed in a hospital gown now, holding a vomit bag, and watching with interest as Dr Charles calmly gathered supplies. Out in the doorway, however, things were definitely not calm. Sarah Reese stood there, arguing with a red-haired man in maroon scrubs.

"Sarah - we need to call CPS," the man was saying. "We don't have a choice here. She's a patient. Those are the rules."

"And since when have you cared about the rules?" Sarah countered incredulously. "I'm telling you - I just need five minutes."

Their eyes darted back toward her, and then they both lowered their voices. Obviously this was not a conversation they wanted her to hear.

To Dr Charles, who was standing beside the bed calmly gathering some supplies, Joelle said, "Can everyone stop treating me like I'm stupid?"

That seemed to get everyone's attention. Three sets of eyes were locked on her now - one set shocked, another concerned, and the last entirely unsurprised.

"I think you've already proved you're anything but stupid, Joelle," Dr Charles said calmly, gesturing for her hand. "I'm going to give you a little drip. We'll get some fluids and some anti-nausea stuff into you."

She handed him her right hand without question, watching with interest as he gently felt around for her vein. She gave it a few seconds, then said, "About a centimetre to the left. It likes to hide over there where you don't think to look for it."

"You seem to know what you're talking about."

That had come from the newcomer - the man whose scrubs clashed magnificently with his hair.

"I'm Dr Halstead," he continued kindly. "We're gonna take a look at you, see if we can't work out what's going on."

She didn't miss a beat. "This isn't my first rodeo, Dr Halstead. And I already know what's going on. You can save your tests - just read the file."

Will looked questioningly to Dr Charles, who gestured to the thick manila file sitting on the chair beside her backpack. He walked around the bed, picked it up, and held it closer to his face.

"You wanna give me the Cliffnotes version?"

It wasn't all that funny, but it was enough for her to crack a small smile. "Sure," she said quietly. "But I don't want her here."

She didn't gesture, but she didn't have to. There was no questioning exactly who she was talking about.

Sarah had opened her mouth to say something, but she found herself cut off by the stubborn girl in the hospital bed. To Will, she said, "You can pull your guardian ad litem crap if you want, but I'm not letting you treat me until she's gone."

Although she wanted nothing more than to fight it, Sarah Reese knew when she was beat. Her hands held up in front of her, she found herself saying, "Okay. If that's what you want, then okay. I'll be out here if you need me."

She stepped outside and closed the door behind her - and then artfully moved her way around an incoming trauma case. The little girl watched her closely until she was on the other side of the department. She waited until she was sure Sarah had sat herself at a desk and had opened a file before she diverted her attention back to the other two doctors again. For their part, they shared a quick look - one questioning, one clearly concerned - then their attention was back on their patient.

"I've been in and out of hospitals my whole life," she told them slowly. "Chronic kidney disease."

Will's shoulders slumped ever so slightly. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she answered him. "I don't want your pity."

Sensing this was about to go absolutely nowhere, Dr Charles stepped in. "You said something earlier about needing a transplant."

What she hadn't noticed until now was that Dr Halstead had her file open. "I can see here you're on the donor list. But they haven't -"

"- Found a suitable HLA match." Both doctors raised they eyebrows in surprise at her jumping in, but neither stopped her. "Yeah, yeah. None of this is news to me."

"So the million dollar question is, what can we do for you in Chicago that your doctors in New York can't?"

Say what you will about Will Halstead, but there's not denying the man is perceptive. And - even when his patient is as young as this one - he knows when to cut to the point.

"My name is Joelle Kirkpatrick," the girl said quietly. Staring longingly out at the doctor she had banished from her room, however, she added, "You wouldn't know it, but I have family here."

* * *

They'd managed to get absolutely nothing out of her after that. Will clearly wasn't happy about it, but he'd begrudgingly agreed to monitor the girl while they let the drip run its course. He'd stepped outside the room knowing he had to find Ms Goodwin, who would call in CPS. Then - and only then - would they actually be able to treat this patient.

He wasn't entirely surprised to find someone falling into step beside him as he headed down the hallway. Without looking, he knew he was speaking to his favourite psychiatrist.

"So are you gonna tell me what's going on, or do I have to wait for the eleven-year-old to do it?"

If this were any other conversation on any other day, she would be rolling her eyes. Instead, she'd all but whispered, "Not here."

He shot her a funny look as they waited for the elevator, but she didn't elaborate. She just shook her head and stared down at the ground. Her shoes, he noticed, had clearly been haphazardly cleaned of something. That, he sensed, was a story for later.

It took them less than five minutes to reach Ms Goodwin's office. The muffled raised voices on the other side of the door would normally have been enough to send Sarah Reese running in the opposite direction. Today, however, she found herself knocking. She waited, and then she knocked again.

The door flew open to reveal one very pissed-off Sharon Goodwin, and - to Sarah's utter horror - two cardiothoracic surgeons.

"What do you want, Dr Reese? Dr Halstead?" the hospital administrator demanded impatiently.

"Uh - we need to talk to you about a case downstairs," Will said somewhat awkwardly. "We've got a kid -"

"- Look, Will, can this wait?" Connor Rhodes demanded rudely from the other side of the room.

"Actually, no. It can't," Sarah countered just as rudely, staring the senior doctor down. "The patient in question is my daughter."

She could feel Will's head turning every so slowly to look at her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Ms Goodwin hurriedly shooing the second surgeon out of her office. Over on the other side of the room, however, she watched Connor Rhodes' eyes grow as wide as saucers. She watched the shock her words had given him slowly melt its way across his face.

Apparently, Ms Goodwin hadn't noticed Rhodes was still in the room. She gestured for the two doctors to enter her office and quickly shut the door behind them.

"I wasn't aware you had children," Ms Goodwin said, clearly struggling to regain her composure.

"I don't," Sarah said simply.

When no one else spoke, she took it as her cue to explain the story.

"I was barely sixteen, spending the summer in New York City," she said far more confidently than she felt. "Met a guy. One thing led to another and, well ..."

The room was still in shocked silence.

Speaking directly to Ms Goodwin now, Sarah said, "She's grown up in the system. I know we need to call CPS, but -"

"- No, Dr Reese," Ms Goodwin cut her off, though her tone was still kind. "There is no way around that."

"I know," Sarah nodded. "What I'm saying is ... actually, I don't think I know what I'm saying."

Will broke the silence then. "The kid clearly knows how this all works, Ms Goodwin. She's talked me through her history - has a better understanding of it that when I would've got from her file, by the way." That was the point he presented the administrator with the largest CPS file any of them had ever encountered. "Her health record's pretty extensive."

Speaking directly to Will as the treating doctor now, Sharon Goodwin asked, "What are we looking at?"

"She needs a new kidney," he said honestly, very aware that Sarah's eyes had closed in an effort to stop any tears from falling. "And she needs it now."

Sharon looked to Sarah, who nodded. "Test me," she said in a whisper.

That was when Connor made his presence known. "I'll, uh ... I'll help. Start the tests and whatnot."

"Thank you, Dr Rhodes," Sharon said, clearly a little unsure why he was still there but grateful he was stepping up nonetheless.

* * *

Out in the hallway, however, Sarah Reese was anything but grateful Connor Rhodes had decided to step up. She'd thought of making a run for it as she left Ms Goodwin's office, but there was no use - he would only catch her somewhere else in the hospital. The man had a tendency to do that.

They walked side by side in frosty silence back to the elevator, and then through the hallways to get back to the ED. She made a beeline for the equipment bins, where she collected everything he would need, and then met him over in the doctor's lounge. He stood by the sink, an empty coffee cup in his hands. He jumped when the door swung closed behind her, as though it were pulling him out of his thoughts.

"I figured we could do this here," she said quietly.

He, on the other hand, said nothing.

"The last thing they need is me clogging up a treatment room."

She'd shrugged her coat off now, and was rolling up the arm of her shirt to reveal her elbow. Still, he said nothing.

Gesturing to the needle in front of her, she said, "Are you going to -"

"- Were you ever going to tell me?"

The words hung in the air, suffocating them both. When she didn't say anything, his tone hardened.

"Were you ever going to tell me?"

The repeated question didn't help. Instead, she took the needle in her free hand and pulled the plastic cap off with her teeth. She was halfway through identifying a vein when he muttered something inaudible and took the needle out of her grasp. Once he had it in place, however, there was no escaping it.

He was crouched down in front of where she sat on the sofa, staring very intently at the foreign object in her arm. He'd disconnected one tube of blood and was about to reconnect another when she finally spoke:

"Would it have made a difference?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Three**

"Of course it would've made a difference."

She'd wanted to open her eyes, to stare him down and argue that of course it wouldn't have. Instead, she sat stock still, her eyes closed, trying her absolute hardest not to dissolve into tears. Finally, she broke. It wasn't that he was suddenly interested. It wasn't even that everything was coming out. It was that she realised this little girl - _her _little girl - had needed her her entire life. And she hadn't been there.

Her eyes flew open, the tears finally making their escape.

"No, it really wouldn't have!" she all but yelled at him. "It was a summer fling, Connor. You were about to run off to residency in Riyadh, for God's sake! What reason would you have had to have cared?!"

"You were never just a summer fling to me."

The words should have been comforting. Sweet, even. But in that moment, the words reached out and cut her like a knife.

He'd left, then, taking the vials of her blood in the general direction of pathology. She'd remained on the couch for God only knows how long, her head in her hands and her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobbing.

_She'd failed her. She'd failed her own daughter._

* * *

Will had been impatiently waiting for CPS for nearly three hours by the time a case worker finally arrived. The second the highly frazzled man stumbled his way through the department doors - and promptly dropped his files all over the floor - Will had started.

"You took your sweet time," he told the man, who was trying desperately to collect his files.

"You know the drill - overworked, underpaid. You're the fourth emergency call I've had today."

"Don't care, dude," Will said dismissively. "I need your okay to treat my patient."

"Yeah, just let me look and the file and then -"

"- It's not that simple," Will said, gesturing for the now-standing man to follow him across the department and into the doctor's lounge. "She's from New York, grown up in the system. Bought her file with her. The thing is - her biological mom is a doctor, here."

Apparently that had thrown the poor man. "Here?"

Will opened the door to the doctor's lounge then, bringing the attention to Sarah, who was still sitting on the couch trying to pull herself together. Gesturing to her, Will said kindly, "Here."

* * *

Down in pathology, Connor was standing over Joey Thomas' shoulder, watching and waiting impatiently as he tested Sarah's blood against a sample taken from the young girl upstairs.

"Well?" he demanded when the pathologist finally stopped. All he got in response was a shake of the head. "But - how?"

The pathologist shrugged. "Look, all I can tell you is that the sample definitely belongs to a close relative, probably a parent. But it doesn't have the right markers for a transplant."

Connor stared at the computer screen, determined to find something - anything - in the results. But there it was, clear as day: _No Match_.

He didn't think about what it was he was doing. He walked into the morgue across the hallway, where he knew he would find what he needed. When he came back, he'd already opened the sterile plastic packaging and had the needle in his arm before he even sat down.

"What are you doing?" Joey's eyes were bugging out of his head.

"I'm going to need you to test another sample."

* * *

Will Halstead was clearly over paperwork. By the time he had filled out all the forms - and sat down with Sarah and the CPS worker for a conference call with the case worker in New York, he was ready to scream. Since a transplant was such drastic surgery, both of the case workers needed to know they had exhausted every other option - all while the little girl's life ultimately hung in the balance. It certainly explained why no one had tried too hard to find a blood relative before she took it into her own hands. He was about to tell them this, to give them both a piece of his mind, when Connor Rhodes appeared in the doorway of the doctor's lounge.

"You've got the results?" Will, who was letting Sarah argue with the not-doctors that apparently had control over someone else's healthcare, had chosen to completely ignore everything else going on around him and focus on the matter at hand. His words had, at least, got everyone's attention.

Sarah was sitting straight up in her chair, hopeful eyes trained determinedly on Connor. With one shake of his head, however, he knew he'd broken her heart.

"Then what do we do?" she asked him dejectedly.

Silently, he handed her the paper in his hands. Her eyes raced across the page, and then slowly moved back to him.

Without taking his eyes off her, Connor told Will, "I'm a match. I want to direct donate my kidney."

"With all due respect, Dr Rhodes, you don't know this kid."

The case worker was right, but one look at the paper in Sarah's hands explained everything.

_Probability of Paternity: 99.99%  
HLA: Match_

Will didn't know what to say. If he were honest, there was nothing to say. He looked from Connor to Sarah and back, but thought better of even considering broaching the subject right now. Instead, he said for the case workers' benefit, "In that case, I'll get my patient prepped for surgery."

* * *

On the other side of the ED, the little girl watched with interest as Will left the doctor's lounge and made a beeline for her room.

"So, Joelle, -"

"- Joey," she said automatically. "People always call me Joey."

Will smiled. "Joey, then. I have some good news."

"She's a match?"

His smile faltered, and he found himself gently sitting himself in one of the plastic chairs beside her bed. He leaned forward to rest his arms atop the safety rail and said awkwardly, "Uh, not exactly."

She shot him a confused look. "But she's my mother. She has to be a match."

"No," a third voice said from the doorway. Joey's eyes flicked up to meet Sarah's. "Can I come in?"

The girl surveyed her for a moment, then nodded quickly - just the once. She was clearly apprehensive, but Sarah took the opportunity to gingerly step into the room. When she stood on the other side of her daughter's bed, she explained.

"See, I don't have the right kind of antibodies in my blood. Which means if I were to give you a kidney -"

"- My body would reject it," Joey finished the thought for her. "I've been on the transplant list long enough to understand that."

"But," Will said gently, "it's not all bad news. We found a match."

Joey frowned at him. "How?" she asked. "There's something weird about my system. No one's ever found a match for me before."

Will looked to Sarah, who took a shuddery breath.

"We're lucky," she told her daughter with a sad smile. "One of the other doctors here got tested too. It turns out he's a perfect match. He's going to direct donate his kidney. For you."

Lucky for both of them, Joey was frozen in place at that moment. She looked like she was staring at Sarah, but in reality she wasn't. In the ten seconds the little girl was caught up in her own thoughts, Sarah's eyes darted over to Will, whose face held a stony expression. By the time Joey's mind seemed to catch up with what she was hearing, however, the look was gone, replaced with joy and anticipation.

"Where is he?" the girl demanded. "I want to meet him. To say thank you."

"After," Will told her. "I'm sure he'll pop in and say hi. But right now he's upstairs being prepped for surgery."

"Which is where you're going, too," Sarah said happily, though still blinking back tears. She pulled the safety rail up on her side of the bed, and helped Will push the bed out toward the door.

As they started their journey down the hallway, they were joined by the OR team who surrounded the bed. Just as they started to take over, however, that little girl surprised all of them.

"Wait!" she called, causing the bed to stop its motion. Looking directly at Sarah, she said, "I ... Iwantyoutocomewithme."

The sentence came out as a single word, but Sarah and everyone around them had understood exactly what she meant.

Will looked from mother to daughter with a grin. Cutting the tension, he said, "DNA tests be damned. That's all the proof I need right there. Like mother, like daughter."

Sarah couldn't help it - she laughed. Her smile still in place, she told Joey kindly, "Of course I'll be there. You couldn't get rid of me if you tried."

She certainly didn't know how to do this whole 'mother' thing. But all things considered, this seemed like a really good start.


End file.
